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Friday, October 19, 2007

A Poet, A Collection, and Pure Joy

All things in this poor world of ours, 'tis true,Are tangled mysteries without a clue;And he, however wise, who attempts to solve them willEncounter darker, deeper, stranger mysteries still.(English translation of the four lines beneath Kochanowski's image)

I discovered Jan just today as I was looking through my new book on Poets And Poetry of Poland. Actually, the book isn't new. It's just new to me. It was one of several books I purchased last week at the Orchard Lake Cardinal Maida Library book sale. Remember me telling you about that? Well it turns out that I made out like a bandit at that sale. It was $5.00 to fill a paper grocery bag with books. I filled three! For a grand total of $15.00 I came home with 55 books, 53 of which are books on various aspects of Polish history. Talk about a kid in a candy shop… I couldn't believe my good fortune.

It's taken me most of the week to go through my new books and catalog them so that I know what I have and a bit about what is in each of them. I literally have books that cover Poland's history from Stone Age man through the Solidarity Movement of the early 1980s. And the best part is, they are all in English!

So now I have my own little library of Polish history and I'm a happy girl indeed :-) I'll no doubt the sharing bits and pieces of my new collection with you here from time to time.

[Poets and Poetry of Poland, edited by Paul SOBOLESKI, copyright 1929, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. A note inside the book indicates that the first edition of this book was published in 1881 in Chicago. The second edition with additions, was published in 1883. This third edition is a reprint of the second edition, arranged by the Paul SOBOLESKI Society of Milwaukee Wisconsin.]